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Historical Collections of Ohio

By Henry Howe

Vol. II

©1888

 

PERRY COUNTY.

 

 

Page 382

 

 

  PERRY COUNTY was formed March 1, 1817, from Washington, Muskingum and Fairfield, and named from Commodore Oliver H. PERRY.  The surface is mostly rolling, and in the South hilly; the soil is clayey, and in the middle and northern part fertile.

 

  Area about 410 square miles.  In 1887 the acres cultivated were 66,700; in pasture, 102,176; woodland, 33,929; lying waste, 2,487; produced in wheat, 159,585 bushels; rye, 2,898; buckwheat, 212; oats, 54,621; barley, 108; corn, 517,542; meadow hay, 23,029 tons; clover hay, 883; potatoes, 34,286 bushels; tobacco, 500 lbs.; butter, 431,940; sorghum, 2,087 gallons; maple syrup, 11,472; honey, 3,005 lbs.; eggs, 370,713 dozen; grapes, 20,286 lbs.; wine, 270 gallons; sweet potatoes, 1,643 bushels; apples, 3,944; peaches, 1,017; pears, 622; wool, 334,183 lbs.; milch cows owned, 4,747.  Ohio mining statistics, 1888: Coal mined, 1,736,805 tons, employing 3,301 miners and 433 outside employees; iron ore, 10,129 tons; fire-clay, 45 tons; limestone, 4,217 tons burned for fluxing.

 

  School census, 1888, 8,063; teachers, 195.  Miles of railroad track, 139.

 

 

 

  Population of Perry in 1820 was 8,459; 1830, 14,063; 1840, 19,340; 1860, 19,678; 1880, 28,218, of whom 22,528 were born in Ohio; 1,165, Pennsylvania; 523, Virginia; 149, Kentucky; 136, New York; 48, Indiana; 1,346, England and Wales; 925, Ireland; 269, Scotland; 249, German Empire; 56, British America; 39, France; and 17, Sweden and Norway.  Census of 1890, 31,151.

 

COAL AND IRON.

 

  Perry is the largest coal-producing county in the State.  It also produces large quantities of hematite iron ore.  A few miles south of McLuney Station, Bearfield township, a valuable deposit of black-band ore has been discovered and quite extensively worked on the WHITLOCK farm, for Maxahala furnace.   Within three miles of New Lexington, the so-called Baird ore is mined quite extensively on many farms.  It has been demonstrated that the Baird ore of Perry county is the limestone ore of the Hanging Rock district.

 

  Monday Creek, Salt Lick, Coal and Monroe townships belong to the Hocking Valley coal field, constituting an important portion of what is known as the “Great Vein” territory, in which the Middle Kittanning seam ranges from five to thirteen and one-half feet in thickness.

 

  The coal mines of the northern and central townships of Perry are similar in character to those of Muskingum county; they are especially adapted to domestic uses and for making steam.  The Columbus and Eastern railroad is doing much for the development of the coal fields of this region.

 

 

  Page 383

 

HAMMOND, David PUGH, Robt. McCLUNG, Isaac BROWN, John and Anthony CLAYTON, Isaac REYNOLDS, Daniel SHEARER, Peter OVERMYER, Adam BINCKLEY, Wm. And Jacob DUSENBURY, John POORMAN, John FINCK, Daniel PARKINSON, John LASHLEY, Peter DITTOE, John DITTOE, and Michael DITTOE.  The first church erected in the county was at New Reading; it was a Lutheran church, of which the Rev. Mr. FOSTER was the pastor; shortly after, a Baptist church was built about three miles east of Somerset.

 

  The road through this county was, “from 1800 to 1815, the great thoroughfare between Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio and the Eastern States, or until steamboat navigation created a new era in the history of travellers—a perpetual stream of

 

 

VIEW AT THE COAL MINES, SHAWNEE.

 

emigrants rolled Westward along its course, giving constant occupation to hundreds of tavern-keepers, seated at short distances along its borders and consuming all the spare grain raised by the inhabitants for many miles north and south of its line.  Groups of merchants on horseback with led horses, laden with Spanish dollars, travelled by easy stages every spring and autumn along its route, congregated in parties of ten or twenty individuals, for mutual protection, and armed with dirks, pocket pistols, and pistols in holsters, as robberies sometimes took place in the more wilderness parts of the road.  The goods, when purchased, were wagoned to Pittsburg and sent in large flat boats, or keel boats, to their destination below, while the merchant returned on horseback to his home, occupying eight or ten weeks in the whole tour.”

 

  Somerset in 1846.—Somerset, the county-seat, is forty-three miles easterly from Columbus, on the Macadamized road leading from Zanesville to Lancaster, from each of which it is eighteen miles, or midway, which circumstance gave it, when originally laid out, the name of Middletown.

 

 

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school for young females.  It is well conducted and many Protestant families send their daughters here to be educated.—Old Edition.

 

  About two miles south of Somerset are the buildings shown in the annexed view.  The elegant building in the centre is St. Joseph’s church, recently erected; on the right is seen the convent building; the structure partly shown beyond St.

 

 

Drawn by Henry Howe in 1846

SAINT JOSEPH’S CHURCH AND CONVENT.

 

Joseph’s church is the oldest Catholic church in the State, the history of which we give in an extract from an article in the United States Catholic Magazine for January, 1847, entitled, “The Catholic Church in Ohio.”

 

  The first chapel of which we have any authentic record that was ever consecrated to Almighty God within our borders was St. Joseph’s, in Perry county, which was solemnly blessed on the 6^th of December, 1818, by Rev. Edward FENWICK and his nephew, Rev. N. D. YOUNG, of the order of St. Dominic, both natives of Maryland, and deriving their jurisdiction from the venerable Dr. FLAGET, who was then the only bishop between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi.  This chapel was first built of logs, to which an addition of stone was subsequently made, so that it was for a considerable time “partly logs and partly stone.”  When the congregation, which consisted of only ten families when the chapel was first opened, had increased in number, the logs disappeared and a new addition, or, to speak more correctly, a separate church of brick, marked the progress of improvement and afforded new facilities for the accommodation of the faithful.  An humble convent, whose revered inmates, one American, N. D. YOUNG, one Irishman, Thomas MARTIN, and one Belgian, Vincent de RYMACHER, cheerfully shared in all the hardships and privations incident to the new colony, was erected near the church, and from its peaceful precincts the saving truths of faith were conveyed and its divine sacraments administered to many a weary emigrant who had almost despaired of enjoying those blessings in the solitude which he had selected for his home.  The benedictions of the poor and the refreshing dews of heaven descended on the spiritual seed thus sown.  It increased and multiplied the hundred fold.  New congregations were formed in Somerset, Lancaster, Zanesville, St. Barnabas, Morgan county, Rehoboth and St. Patrick’s, seven miles from St. Joseph’s, and in Sapp’s settlement and various other stations still more distant was the white habit of St. Dominic hailed by the lonely Catholic as the harbinger of glad tidings and the symbol of the joy, the purity and the triumphs which attest the presence of the Holy Spirit and the fufilment of the promises made by her divine founder to the church.

 

 

Page 385

 

Top Right: The Perry County Court-House, New Lexington.

Top Left: Oliver H. Perry.

Bottom

Drawn by Henry Howe in 1846

CENTRAL VIEW IN SOMERSET.

The old County Court-House shown on the right is yet standing, and M. F. Scott

 

Page 386

 

  SOMERSET, for many years the county-seat, is seven miles northwest of New Lexington, the present county-seat, on the Straitsville Branch of the B. & O. Railroad.  City officers, 1888: D. O. BRUNNER, Mayor; Thomas SCANLON, Clerk; Owen YOST, Solicitor; E. T. DROEGE, Treasurer; W. C. WEIR, Marshall and Street Commissioner.  Newspaper: Press, Labor, W. P. MAGRUDER, editor and publisher.  Churches: 1 Lutheran, 1 German Reformed, 1 Catholic and 1 Methodist.  Population, 1880, 1,207.  School census, 1888, 361; J. B. PHINNEY, school superintendent.

 

  In the old description of Somerset we have spoken of the female academy of St. Mary’s.  It has long been a famed institution.  It was established at Somerset in 1830 by Bishop FENWICK, the first Catholic Bishop of Cincinnati.  Years after our visit it was destroyed by fire, and it was removed to about four miles east of the capitol building at Columbus.  It was incorporated in July, 1868, under the direction of the Dominican Sisters.  It is now widely known as the “Academy of St. Mary of the Springs,” and is a highly popular institution.  It is near Alum creek, a branch of the Scioto, and under the general charge of Bishop WATTERSON.  The building is large and commodious.  “The location is unsurpassed in its salubrity and beauty of landscape; the distracting sights and sounds of the bustling world are excluded by shady groves and sloping hills.”

 

  St. Joseph’s Church, shown in the view taken in 1846, was also destroyed by fire, but another replaces it and with a noble college building standing by it.

 

TRAVELLING NOTES.

 

  SOMERSET, May 21.—Somerset has changed but little.  The old picture fits even to this day.  As I was making the drawing for it a brother of Phil SHERIDAN, then 9 years old, on his way to school, looked over my shoulder as he now tells me, while Phil himself was clerking it in the town somewhere—may be saw me seated in a chair near A. ARNDT’s sign.  The old sign has gone—no longer creaks in the wind—catches no snow—gone, too, is Andy.  Nobody lives forever.  The old court-house is still standing, with the same old inscription over the door, with its Irish bull—

 

“Let Justice be Done IF the Heavens should Fall.”

 

  The one-story brown building beyond it exists now only in my picture; never was a sparkling gem set in the brow of Somerset.  It was GARLINGER’S grocery—a great institution in the times of the thirsty and free fights.

 

  Free Fights.—Says an old citizen to me: “I remember one muster-day, about forty years ago, seeing a crowd of men pouring out of that grocery and indulging in a free flight, and all wearing red warmers, i.e., roundabout loose jackets of red flannel.  At that time there were often fights on the square.  When parties had a grievance, they would put off settling it until muster-day.  Then they would have it out, rough and tumble, often with rings around.  The fight over, they would become good friends again.  Frequently these fights would be to see who was the best man.”  “In those days, when any farmer was sick, his neighbors would get in his crops and take good care of him.”

 

  “They do that now; don’t they?”

 

  “No!” he replied; “but they don’t fight any more.”

 

 

  Page 387

 

  Phil. SHERIDAN’s Boyhood.—I asked about Phil. SHERIDAN.  He replied, “SHERIDAN was a very bright, trusty boy.  Before going to West Point he clerked for various parties in town; once clerked in this very store.”  I asked, “How did he get his appointment?”  “Why, he got it himself.  There was a vacancy from this district, when he wrote to Gen. RICHEY, our member of Congress, that he wanted it.”  In speaking of it, years afterwards, and just after Stone River, RICHEY said: “It was at the close of the Mexican war; the pressure upon me was so tremendous for a cadetship, backed by strong, influential recommendations, that I was in great anxiety which way to move when I got Phil’s letter backed by no one.  I knew him, and it was so manly and so spirited that I that very day went to the War Department and ordered the warrant to be made out, fearful that if I deferred it some malign influence would be brought to bear to make me reject the application; and having done it, I had a deep sense of relief.”

 

  The Boyhood Home of SHERIDAN.—The next morning after this conversation I sketched the boyhood home of Phil. SHERIDAN.  His father was a laboring man, and took contracts for macadamizing the National Road and other roads.  The house was occupied by the family in their more humble days.  In his later years he built a neat cottage residence about half a mile south of the town.  He died at the age of 75 years from blood-poisoning, which originated from a kick at night in the wrist from a vicious horse, the wound not healing.

 

  The old homestead is but three minutes’ walk from M. F. SCOTT’s store, and yet quite out of town.  Somerset, like the old towns built upon the National Road, and like other macadamized thoroughfares, consists mainly of a single street with the buildings compact, like poor pieces of cities set down in the country.  Such places have no pleasant village aspects, and therefore make one sad in thinking of what “might have been.”

 

  The main building of the old homestead consists of three rooms only, and is unoccupied and dilapidated, and we have tried to make it look as it did in “Phil.’s” boyhood days, and so have introduced the boy galloping on a horse around the corner, which is supposed to be “Phil.” as he then was, preparing, unknown to himself, for that later ride, “Up at morning, at break of day.”

 

  The wing this way, consisting of a single room, was built in 1847, and is occupied by Mr. ZORTMAN and wife, laboring people.  Germans, of course, they are, for they had flowers blooming in the windows of their very humble home.  I asked Mrs. Maggie MORRIS, who lived next door, the name of the street.  She answered, “I don’t know; some call it the ‘Happy alley.’”  The Happy alley has upon it but three or four houses, and commands a grateful, open prospect of green fields and sweet smelling slopes, falling away down to the Hocking valley, fifteen miles away to the south, and where, some three years ago, one night, when the mills at Logan were burned, the light was seen reddening the sky.

 

  From here, on the left, over an apple orchard, quarter of a mile away, on a slight hill, stands the old St. Mary’s.  It was a female seminary, with nunnery attached.  St. Mary’s has been removed to Columbus.  It brought back pleasant recollections of hospitable entertainment there, and at St. Joseph’s, from the Catholic Fathers and Sisters.

 

  Talk upon Corn and Grapes.—From the cottage I walked to the present SHERIDAN homestead, half a mile south.  Passed a large field where two men and three boys were hoeing open ground for corn, while two girls were following them, planting.  They wore sunbonnets and their aprons were filled with the kernels, which they held up with one hand and dropped from the other—a pleasant sight.  My companion, Mr. ____, a friend of the SHERIDAN family, said: “In corn-planting the women and the girls often help.  Under the most favorable weather corn will mature in ninety days from planting; sometimes it requires 120 days.  The ground must be right as to moisture.  If too wet, the corn will decay.  The season being short the planting has to be hurried; hence, all of a family help.  The heavy frost of June 5, 1859, destroyed the wheat of this region.  Yet that was one of the most fruitful years here known, for the entire population turned out, put in varied crops, and, the autumn being long and warm, everything ripened.”

 

  “Some fifteen or twenty years ago,” he continued, “there was a great furore hereabouts for planting grapes, the soil and climate seeming especially adapted to them, the varieties being Catawba, Ives’ Seedling, Delaware and Concord, the last the most prolific.  Some parties went into it so largely that it ruined them.  For a while, wine was made largely and sold even as low as eighteen cents a gallon, and even then there was no market.  Physicians were anxious to prescribe it, but Americans can’t be taught to drink sour wines.”

 

  The SHERIDAN Homestead.—I found this to be a neat, simple cottage of wood with eight rooms.  It stands back about twenty yards from the road, midst trees and shrubbery.  Among these were evergreens and honeysuckles climbing trellis-work.  The location of the cottage is in a small valley, in front of a grove, now called “Sheridan’s Grove.”  A big tree stands by the house, marking the spot where, in the campaign of 1840, HARRISON, CORWIN, EWING and HAMER addressed political meetings.  Here, too, in the grove was held the first meeting of the three years’ men in the civil war.

 

 

Page 388

 

eat.”  I replied, “Any seat at the table with the mother of Gen. SHERIDAN is an honor.”  She gracefully bowed, smiled, and gave a “Thank you, sir.”

 

  To a question, later, in the parlor, about her son, she replied, “Oh, he’s an Ohio boy.”  The way she replied, “Oh, he’s an Ohio boy,” showed she was filled with the sense of the greatness of Ohio.  Just as she answered it, the subject was changed by my companion, Mr. _____, a friend of the family, interrupting.  He took from the shelf and showed me a war bonnet of the Cheyennes.  It was a gorgeous affair of fuss and feathers, and the only garment which those wild creatures wear when they go naked, riding and whooping, into battle.

 

  Among the curiosities in the house was the inkstand used by Gen. LEE in signing the articles of surrender.  In the parlor Mrs. SHERIDAN showed me “Phil.’s” photograph in a line with his staff, some fifteen or twenty young men.  With a single exception he was the shortest of the group, and so worn down at the close of the war, she said he weighed but 130 pounds.  It was evident that SHERIDAN’s activity of mind and person came from this bright little woman.  It is quite a satisfaction to me that I have had interviews with the mothers of both SHERIDAN and GRANT—the latter is given in Vol. I., p. 333.

 

  From the SHERIDAN place we continued our walk to St. Joseph.  The church shown in the picture had been burnt and rebuilt, and a new noble college building added.  The Fathers showed me a large billiard-room for the recreation of the students, an innovation upon the idea of the old time as to the proprieties; also the library, which is famous for its rare collection of ancient theological works.

 

  South of St. Joseph the whole country looms up into one huge rounded hill, dotted with fields, forests and farms, and thus to the eye ends the globe in that direction.  St. Joseph is a very secluded “shut-out-of-the-world” spot.  In my original visit I passed over the Sabbath with the Fathers at St. Joseph.

 

  The Sisters were at St. Mary’s and were teachers in the seminary.  Pleasant young women I found them, social and kindly.  One with whom I conversed, I alone remember—Sister Veronica.  I inquired about her and the answer was, “She died about seventeen years ago;” and about Father WILSON, whom I also met there, and the answer also was, “dead.”

 

  SISTER VERONICA is a pleasing memory of a blue-eyed, fair-haired girl.  I could not well forget her, for she told me in such a simple, artless way why she had that name given to her, by relating the beautiful legend on which it was founded, which we here give for the reading of such as may never have heard it:

 

  “As Christ was bearing the cross a woman advanced from the crowd and taking her veil from her head, wiped the sweat and blood from his face and brow, when a miracle was performed; an exact image of our Saviour’s face was printed thereon.  Thereafter she was called ‘Veronica, the woman of the veil.’  That concluded, she is one of the legends of the church.  It is not essential to our faith that we should believe them.”

 

  FATHER WILSON was a different character, but interesting.  He was, I believe, New England born, and I think from the State of Maine.  He had first gone from a carpenter’s bench into the ministry of the Methodist church and then into that of the Catholic.  As is usual in such cases his zeal was proportionate to the greatness of the change.  He invited me to hear him the Sunday I was here.  I remember only the opening words, “In the world’s great progress. . . .”  At the same time he outstretched his palms and carried into his preaching the shoutings and mannerisms of an old-style Methodist camp-meeting orator.  This must have sometimes astonished his associate priests, being so different from their own.

 

  With tender sympathy he approached me on the subject of my soul’s salvation.  I inquired if after the manner of the Protestants would not answer every practical purpose?  He shook his head.  Thereupon I said: “I have a cousin, a Protestant, a cashier in a bank; his name, Amos TOWNSEND.  For years when a young man, he boarded himself; lived on the most frugal fare and dressed in simple attire; this was to save money that he might alleviate human woe.  All his spare time was given to religious ministrations and visiting the poor and sick, and his purse was ever open to objects of suffering.  When well advanced in life he married a woman who was his counterpart; she had long been his helpmeet in works of charity and they had grown into each other’s lives.  Then he took a little cottage and kept a horse and buggy.  For his own gratification?  Not in the least; but to take out the sick poor that they might have the benefit of fresh air and green fields.  So holy, pure and self-denying is he that his townsmen look upon him as a wonder, the single one man among them all who follows to the last syllable the teachings of the ‘Sermon on the Mount.’  He is small in person, face sad, calm and saintly—so saintly that his townsmen call him Saint Paul.”

 

  Having thus stated, I asked the reverend father, “Where he would go when he died?”

 

  He replied, “Amos TOWNSEND is doubtless a good man.  He has repented, but not believed.  He has fulfilled only a part of the law, so can’t be saved.”

 

  “Go to Purgatory?”

 

  “No!”

 

  “What!  Lower?”

 

  Upon this he simply nodded, but uttered no dreadful word; neither did I.

 

  Were Father WILSON living to-day he would doubtless find that “in the world’s great progress” his opinions had changed.

 

 

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wiser.  With true religion, intelligence, and not ignorance, must be considered the mother of Devotion.  The conception of a recluse of the middle ages was weak compared to the sublime thought which filled the soul of Cardinal NEWMAN when he was brought to face that ever unanswerable question, “Canst thou by searching find out God?”  Science teaches Him in the universe and but supplements and enlarges our conception of the “Great First Cause least understood,” the all-soul-filling ONE.  Justice is the armor of love.  In the ultimate, love must triumph.  God reigns.  “God is love.”  These, my lines, express in part my theology.

 

 

 

 

GENERAL PHILIP HENRY SHERIDAN

 

CHRONOLOGY.

 

  Born in Albany, New York, March 6, 1831, the son of Irish laboring people.  Lived his infancy and youth in Somerset, Ohio; was a clerk for a while in Somerset in the hardware store of John TALBOT and then in the dry-goods store of FINCK & DITTOE, and from there entered as a cadet the United States Military Academy, July 1, 1848.  Graduated July 1, 1853, thirty-fourth in his class of fifty-two, of which James B. McPHERSON was the head, and of which General HOOD, of the Confederate, and SCHOFIELD, of the Union army, were also members.  Then he entered the army as Brevet Second Lieutenant, 1^st Infantry, May 14, 1851; became Captain, 13^th Infantry.  In the volunteer service the ranks and dates of appointment were: May 25, 1862, Colonel, 2d Michigan Cavalry; July, 1862, Brigadier-General; January 31, 1863, Major-General.  In the regular army the dates and ranks were: September 20, 1864, Brigadier-General; November 8, 1864, Major-General; March 4, 1869, Lieutenant-General; June 1, 1888, General.  Three officers only had before received this commission, viz.: WASHINGTON, GRANT and SHERMAN.  He was the nineteenth General-in chief of the United States army.  For forty years—1848 to 1888—from Cadet to General, he was in his country’s service.  He died, August 5, 1888, at Nonquitt, Mass., fifty-seven years five months of age, and lies buried in the National Cemetery, Arlington, the greatest city of the soldier’s dead, and he the greatest soldier of them all.  His grave is on the hill-slope, overlooking the capital of his country, which he loved so well.  In 1879 SHERIDAN married Miss LUCKER, the daughter of Daniel H. LUCKER, of the United States army.  He was a Roman Catholic and devoted to his duties as such.

 

  SHERIDAN never was defeated and often plucked victory out of the jaws of defeat.  He was thoroughly trusted and admired, and loved by his officers and men.  He bore the nickname of “Little Phil,” a term of endearment due to his size, like the “Petite Corporal” of Napoleon I.  He was below the middle height, five feet five inches; but powerfully built, with a strong countenance, indicative of valor and resolution.  His energy and endurance were remarkable.  He could, when occasion required great efforts, endure for long periods great physical strain and loss of sleep.

 

  It was frequently said that SHERIDAN had seen the backs of more rebels than any other federal General.  This is doubtless true, and of itself expresses as well as implies a good deal.  It was known that he was about equally skilful in the command of artillery, cavalry and infantry.  He commanded in the East as well as in the West and was popular and successful with both armies.  He changed the cavalry arm of the service from an inefficient, unreliable force, into a well-disciplined, invincible, victorious army.  He brought his division—all there was left of it—intact out of the deadly struggle in the tall cedars at Stone river.  Though badly cut up with General McCOOK’s corps at Chickamauga, SHERIDAN rallied the remnant of his division and proceeded to march in the direction of the sound of General THOMAS’ guns.

 

 

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